ICANN’s top brass have sent personal apologies to the people whose home addresses were exposed when it published their new gTLD applications last week.

The organization blamed “human error” and said it is now conducting an “investigation” to figure out what went wrong.

The note, which is signed by CEO Rod Beckstrom, chairman Steve Crocker, and COO Akram Atallah, reads:

Dear [name of the affected executive],

On behalf of ICANN, we want to personally apologize for our error in exposing your postal address on the TLD Application website. This was a human error, and we have corrected it. We are conducting an internal investigation in order to learn from this mistake and to ensure that it does not happen again.

In the meantime, please be assured that the New Generic Top-level Domain Program remains on track. We are moving ahead with the screening and evaluation of applications, and returning to our shared goal of bringing competition and choice to the Internet’s domain name space.

We are committed to serving you to the very best of our ability and to ensuring the integrity of the New gTLD Program. If you have questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly.

Sincerely,

ICANN

As I blogged last week, ICANN accidentally neglected to redact the home addresses of many applicants’ named primary and secondary contacts when it published all 1,930 applications last week.